Charles Ruff, White House Counsel Who Defended Clinton in Impeachment, Dies at 61

By NEIL A. LEWIS

Published: November 21, 2000

Correction Appended

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20—
Charles F. C. Ruff, a former White House counsel to President Clinton who was known as one of Washington's most influential if least self-important lawyers and who played an important role in events from Watergate to Mr. Clinton's impeachment, died on Sunday at 61.

Friends and government officials said that it appeared that Mr. Ruff had suffered a heart attack at his home here.

Mr. Ruff, who used a wheelchair because of an undetermined illness he contracted in the 1960's in Africa, where he went to teach law, became best known to the public for his skillful defense of Mr. Clinton during the impeachment trial in the well of the Senate in January 1999.

The case, in which the president was eventually acquitted, allowed Mr. Ruff to display his full range of rhetorical and legal talents. In his presentation, he dissected the case to reveal its basic elements but also painted broad thematic strokes about the role of the presidency.

The charges, he told the senators and the nation, were ''constructed out of sealing wax and strings and spiders' webs'' and ''shifting sand castles of speculation.''

Mr. Ruff said Mr. Clinton's opponents were free to criticize his personal behavior in connection with Monica Lewinsky. But he asked the Senate to consider ''whether this is the moment when, for the first time in our history, the actions of a president have so put at risk the government, the framers decided that there is only one solution,'' removal from office.

His association with notable cases was framed by Watergate, in which he was the last special prosecutor to investigate the assorted offenses that led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, and the recent Clinton impeachment battle. In between, Mr. Ruff had a wide-ranging legal career in which he defended other public figures, including Charles S. Robb, when he was the governor of Virginia, and Senator John Glenn, an Ohio Democrat.

As a partner in the Washington firm of Covington & Burling, Mr. Ruff represented Mr. Robb in an inquiry of whether he had had a role in secretly taping a fellow Democrat and political rival, L. Douglas Wilder, who succeeded him as governor.

Mr. Ruff was credited with foiling prosecutors' efforts to indict Mr. Robb. Mr. Robb was later elected to the Senate and was defeated this month in his quest for a third term.

Mr. Ruff represented Mr. Glenn in the so-called Keating Five investigation, in which Mr. Glenn and four other lawmakers were brought before the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 and questioned about having done favors for Charles F. Keating, a banker and political donor. In the end, the committee merely admonished Senator Glenn, who was re-elected in 1992 and retired in 1998.

Mr. Ruff was also one of the team of lawyers who in 1991 represented Anita F. Hill, the law professor who became the center of the contentious confirmation hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Ms. Hill had accused Judge Thomas of sexually harassing her repeatedly, and Mr. Ruff arranged for her to take a polygraph test to bolster her credibility.

Charles Frederick Carson Ruff was born Aug. 1, 1939, in Cleveland, but spent most of his youth in New York City. He received his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College in 1960 and his law degree at Columbia University in 1963.

Mr. Ruff then eagerly accepted a Ford Foundation fellowship to teach law in Africa. He once described it as the kind of opportunity one shouldn't turn down when one is young.

One morning, he recalled, he awoke in the West African nation of Liberia with flulike symptoms and could not move his legs. Doctors believed it was a virus but were unable to offer a specific diagnosis.

He was never comfortable talking about his disability, sometimes saying simply that law was a sedentary profession.

President Clinton learned of Mr. Ruff's death while en route home from a trip to Asia and told reporters aboard Air Force One, ''All of us at the White House admired Chuck for the power of his advocacy, the wisdom of his judgment and the strength of his leadership.'' He added, ''We loved him for his generous spirit and his keen wit, which he used to find humor in even the most challenging circumstances.''

After returning to the White House, Mr. Clinton traveled to Mr. Ruff's home in northwest Washington to visit his widow, Sue. In addition to his wife, Mr. Ruff is survived by two daughters, Carin Ruff of Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Christy Wagner of Ann Arbor, Mich.; two granddaughters; his mother, Margaret Carson, who lives in Manhattan; and a half-sister, Carla Ruff.

Lanny A. Breuer, who worked with Mr. Ruff both at the White House and at Covington & Burling, said he was a man who was always ''a calming influence in remarkable times.'' Mr. Breuer said that Mr. Ruff seemed to be happiest on Sunday afternoons working in his office, with the television showing a football game without sound as he listened to opera at the same time.

His office was without the photos of himself and important people that is customary in Washington, Mr. Breuer said. But as a baseball fan, Mr. Ruff treasured a photograph of one of his granddaughters being held by Tommy Lasorda, the former Los Angeles Dodgers manager.

When Mr. Ruff left his law firm in 1995 to take a job as corporation counsel for the District of Columbia, he was the subject of much discussion among lawyers in Washington because he took a pay cut from more than $500,000 a year to less than a fifth of that. Washington lawyers may sometimes take huge pay cuts for prestigious federal jobs but not for the relatively obscure one of running what had been a small and much criticized city office.

''He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do,'' Mr. Breuer said. ''And he thought that if he took the job it would encourage others like him to consider doing things like that.''

Photo: Charles Ruff at a House hearing. (Agence France-Presse, 1998)

Correction: November 22, 2000, Wednesday An obituary yesterday about Charles F. C. Ruff, the Washington lawyer and former White House counsel to President Clinton, omitted a surname in some editions for his mother, who survives him. She is Margaret Carson. The obituary also omitted another survivor. She is a half sister, Carla Ruff. Correction: December 14, 2000, Thursday An obituary on Nov. 21 about Charles F. C. Ruff, the former counsel to President Clinton, referred incorrectly to his surviving grandchildren. They are a granddaughter and a grandson, not two granddaughters.